{"id":42226,"date":"2020-12-19T10:00:07","date_gmt":"2020-12-19T18:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=42226"},"modified":"2020-12-18T21:00:39","modified_gmt":"2020-12-19T05:00:39","slug":"everyday-erinyes-245","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2020\/12\/19\/everyday-erinyes-245\/","title":{"rendered":"Everyday Erinyes #245"},"content":{"rendered":"

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto<\/span><\/strong>, Megaera<\/strong><\/span>, and Tisiphone<\/span><\/strong>. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”<\/p>\n

All last year, and going into the year before. I did my best to keep us all updated on the 2020 Census – to participate, to encourage others to participate, to object to the Trump* regime’s obvious efforts to make the Census fail by forcing it to ask stupid questions and making it quittoo soon. It ended up stopping too early, but not as much to early as the regime wanted, andit ended up with 99% of all households countes. And, it has just released its projection that as of April 1, 2021, the total population of the US will be 332 million people.<\/p>\n

Now – next year – comes redistricting. Each state does that for itself (I suppose that statement doesn’t exactly include states which end up woth only one district.) Each state has its own rules. Iowa, for instance, has rules about the shapes of the districts which tend to curb the worst of gerrymandering abuses. Ohio, Pennsylvania, not so much. Here’s an article on how redistricting can be fairly done.
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New electoral districts are coming \u2013 an old approach can show if they’re fair<\/h1>\n
Drawing congressional district boundaries can be complicated.
\nAP Photo\/Gerry Broome<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Jon X. Eguia<\/a>, Michigan State University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

When the results of the 2020 U.S. Census are released, states will use the figures to draw new electoral district maps for the U.S. House of Representatives and for state legislatures. This process has been controversial since the very early days of the nation \u2013 and continues to be so today.<\/p>\n

Electoral district maps designate which people vote for which seat, based on where they live. Throughout history, these maps have often been drawn to give one party or another a political advantage<\/a>, diluting the power of some people\u2019s votes.<\/p>\n

In the modern era, advanced math and computer algorithms are regularly used to analyze potential district boundaries, making it easier to spot these unfairnesses<\/a>, called gerrymandering. But there is a simpler way \u2013 and it\u2019s based on a system used early in the country\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

Before there were districts<\/h2>\n

In the very beginning of the U.S., there weren\u2019t formal electoral districts. Instead, representation was based on counties and towns. For instance, under Pennsylvania\u2019s 1776 state Constitution, each county, and the city of Philadelphia, was assigned a number of state assembly seats \u201cin proportion to the number of taxable inhabitants<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1789, the U.S. Constitution declared that seats in the U.S. House of Representatives would be allocated to the states in proportion to their populations. But it gave no guidance about how to fill those seats. Some states chose to draw an electoral district map, with each district getting one representative. Most of the others chose to grant the entire delegation to the party with the most votes statewide.<\/p>\n

Through the first half of the 1800s, the rest of the states gradually shifted to drawing single-member electoral districts. The ideal was for each of these members \u2013 whether of Congress or a state legislature \u2013 to represent an equal number of people.<\/p>\n

New census data, available every 10 years, was useful for doing this, but many states didn\u2019t redraw their districts to adjust for population changes. As a result, newly developed regions with rapid population growth found themselves with less representation<\/a> than more established population centers with slower growth.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until 1964 that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that all states had to redraw their district boundaries for congressional<\/a> and state elections<\/a>, to guarantee that each member of a state delegation in a given assembly represented an equal number of people according to the latest census.<\/p>\n

At that point, the controversy shifted from the number of people who lived in a district to its shape.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
An 1812 political cartoon depicted a Massachusetts senatorial district as a monster.<\/span>
\nElkanah Tisdale\/Boston Centinel via Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Drawing the boundaries<\/h2>\n

An unfair map can favor one party over another by spreading out supporters across many districts and concentrating opponents in just a few. For instance, the 2018 North Carolina congressional elections saw Republican candidates win 50% of the votes statewide<\/a>. But the Republicans had drawn the districts, so the party won 10 of the 13 seats. In the three districts Democrats won, they scored landslide victories. In the other 10 districts, Republicans won, but with smaller margins.<\/p>\n

Maps aren\u2019t necessarily unfair<\/a> just because they deliver such lopsided results. Sometimes supporters of one party are already concentrated, as in cities. It\u2019s possible for a fair map to deliver large Democratic wins in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Detroit or Milwaukee while the party gets only half the statewide votes in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan or Wisconsin.<\/p>\n